Students of the medical or veterinary arts as well as experienced medical practitioners need to maintain proficiencies or to learn new procedures in the practice of surgical and suturing techniques and methods of doing skin biopsies and excision of subcutaneous growths or structures. The surgical procedures require substantial practice before a medical student or practitioner can safely and effectively perform the procedures on a patient. Teaching aids existing in the applicable art areas for practicing suturing procedures may be represented by those described in or referenced by U.S. Pat. No. 4,386,917 to Forrest, describing a suturing training device and method utilizing a multilayer material simulating human tissue, by U.S. Pat. No. 5,310,348 to Miller, describing a surgical suture demonstration kit for use in practicing various surgical sutures, by U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,001 to Graham et al, describing a skin model for practicing intradermal injection of fluids, or by U.S. Pat. No. 4,789,340 to Zikria, describing a surgical student teaching aid for practicing various surgical techniques.
Practicing suturing and removal of lesions such as lipomas, sebaceous cysts, or other subcutaneous growths and performing various minor surgical procedures are fundamental practices in the training of medical or veterinary students and in the practice of various other medical procedures by students or experienced practitioners. Surgery or suturing practice techniques presently in use as exemplified by the patents just described or those referenced therein or other known techniques suffer various inadequacies or deficiencies that render them of limited usefulness or desirability for use. For example, pigs legs or cadavers have been used and are presently in use for practicing suturing techniques by medical students and experienced practitioners. However, these materials, being biological, require proper storage to avoid degrading and therefore have limited usefulness except for short, well controlled demonstrations, and, further, have associated therewith various objections to use for social or religious reasons. Surgery or suturing teaching materials such as those described or referenced in the prior art provide the student with limited variety of suture practice and excision examples exemplary of those that the student would encounter repeatedly in practice, are generally bulky and cumbersome in use, are extremely costly, are not sufficiently portable to provide the student the option of practicing at all convenient times and places, fail to provide adequate pictorial, instructional and reference materials for various suturing techniques, and are structured as to preclude ease of storage and retrieval of notes or reference materials.
There is, therefore, a long standing need for a simple to use, inexpensive and easily portable surgery practice kit on which the user/student/practitioner can practice various incision and suturing techniques and can practice the removal of lesions such as lipomas, sebaceous cysts or other subcutaneous growths or structures.